Why eat raw food

Why Eat Raw Foods?

"Life is designed raw. Out of trillions of organisms that were alive at the beginning of time, are alive now and will be alive at the end of time, only one tampers with its food. You do not want to bet against those kind of odds."(excerpt from Sunfood Diet Success System-David Wolfe)

Only humans and domesticated animals eat cooked and processed foods.

The cooking and processing of foods has become so commonplace that most of us do not even question it.

"The essential is to get rid of deeply rooted prejudices, which we often repeat without examining them." Einstein

Uncooked foods provide us with more nutrients. The cooking process has been shown to destroy nutrients. The higher the temperature, the more is destroyed. Low- temperature dehydration is the best method for warming or drying your food. Other forms of cooking such as steaming, boiling, baking and frying are destructive to the sensitive molecular structure of our food. Most food is cooked at well over 160°C. At such high temperatures up to 80% of the nutritional value of the food is lost.

Here is a summary of some of the research findings regarding cooking and its effect on food:

Heat-sensitive vitamins like vitamin C and the B vitamins, including B12, are destroyed.

Good fats become bad fats and eventually turn into trans fats - the highly-toxic type of fat formed in baking and frying.

50% of the bioavailability of protein is lost when protein-rich foods are cooked.

A known human carcinogen called acrylamide is formed in the high-temperature cooking of carbohydrates and protein.

When more than 50% of your meal (by weight) is cooked, your body experiences an increased white blood cell count. This means that your immune system has been activated to fight a potential threat: the unrecognisable food you just ate!

Cooking destroys the electrical charge of the cells of our food. Our cells in turn lose their charge and can’t function properly.

Because of the destruction of all enzymes, cooked food requires far more energy to digest. Animal foods, especially meat, are considered the most energetically draining to try and digest.

Cooking also increases the acid-forming nature of food. Our internal acid / alkaline balance is one of our primary health balances. If our bodies become too acidic, disease follows. If our bodies are alkaline, disease cannot take hold. We are not only acidified by food; stress, environmental toxins, medication, dehydration and negative emotional states all have an acidic effect.

Most food eaten in the Western diet is acid-forming. Correcting this imbalance is one of the most important steps you can take in ensuring long health. It is beyond the scope of this book to go into detail about pH and health and why certain foods are so toxic. I urge you to question and do some research to educate yourself about these poisonous ‘foods’.

Many people are allergic to refined wheat, gluten, sugar and dairy in some way, but for those who have been diagnosed with a related condition or intolerance, dietary options often feel limited and restrictive. Adopting a raw food approach is an obvious choice because of the lack of the offending allergens but what’s more, eating this way is fun.